Charles Bridges
Proverbs 3:6. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
Let our confidence be uniform: In all thy ways acknowledge Him. Take one step at a time, every step with God’s warrant and under His direction. (Compare Ezra 8:21-23, Neh 1:11.) Always plan for yourself in simple dependence on God.2 It is nothing less than self-idolatry to conceive that we can carry on even the ordinary matters of the day without His counsel. He loves to be consulted. Therefore take all your difficulties to be resolved by Him. Be in the habit of going to Him in the first place – before self-will, self-pleasing,3 self-wisdom, human friends, convenience, expedience. Before any of these have been consulted, go to God at once.
Consider no circumstances too clear to need His direction.4 In all your ways, small as well as great – in all your concerns, personal or relative, temporal or eternal – let Him be supreme. Who of us has not found the unspeakable “peace” of bringing to God matters too minute or individual to be entrusted to the most confidential ear?5 Abraham thus acknowledged God. Wherever he pitched a tent for himself, there was always an altar for God (Gen 12:7, 13:18). In choosing a wife for his son, there was a singular absence of worldliness. No mention was made of riches, honour, beauty – only of what concerned the name and honour of his God (Gen 24:1-8; see also his servant: vv 12-27).
Thus did the wise man’s father acknowledge God in all his ways, asking counsel of Him in all his difficulties and was never disappointed.6 Now if we are weaned from the idolatry of making our bosom our oracle, and our heart our counsellor; if in true poverty of spirit we go every morning to our Lord, not knowing how to guide ourselves for the day, our eye constantly looking upward for direction (Ps 5:3, 143:8-10, 25:4,5), the light will come down.7
1An edited extract from Bridges’ commentary on Proverbs.
2Jas 4:15. “If the Lord will” – as Fuller remarks with his pithy quaintness, “a parenthesis, and yet the most important part of the sentence”.
3See the awful hypocrisy of, and the judgement following, asking counsel of God under this deadly influence in Jer 42:1-3, 19-22; Ezek 14:1-6.
4See the evil consequence of this inconsiderate neglect in Jos 9:14.
5Phil 4:6,7: “In every thing”.
61 Sam 23:9-11, 30:6-8; 2 Sam 2:1, 5:19. Compare the smarting rod with the neglect of this godly habit (1 Sam 27:1 with 1 Sam 29).
7Mt 6:22. Compare Ps 32:8, 34:5; Neh 1:4-11, 2:4-8. When nearly 80 years old, Sir Matthew Hale left it on record, as his experience, that whenever he had committed his way simply and unreservedly to the Lord, He had always directed his path.
“He shall direct thy paths.” We do not need new revelations or visible tokens (such as Ex 13:21,22). Study the Word with prayer. Mark God’s Spirit shedding light on it. Compare it with what you observe of the providences of the day (Ps 107:43), not judging by constitutional bias (a most doubtful interpreter) but pondering with sober, practical, reverential faith.
Let the will be kept in a quiet, subdued, cheerful readiness to move, stay, retreat, turn to the right hand or to the left, at the Lord’s bidding – always remembering that what is least our own doing is best, and that a pliable spirit always secures the needful guidance (compare Ps 32:8,9 and Is 48:17,18 with Is 30:21). We may be led, for the exercise of our faith, “in a way that [we] knew not” (Is 42:16, 50:10) – perhaps a way of disappointment, or even of mistake. Yet no step well prayed over will bring ultimate regret. Though the promise will not render us infallible; our very error will be overruled for deeper humiliation and self-knowledge; and thus even this mysterious direction will in the end be gratefully acknowledged; “He led them forth by the right way” (Ps 107:7).